Summer is the Season for Travel Insurance

With summer underway, it’s a good time to review the various options under the heading of “travel insurance”. In this Chartwell Bulletin, we’ll review the two most common options for this coverage.

Per-Trip Travel Insurance

The first type of policy we’ll discuss is the more traditional: travel insurance that is purchased for a specific trip. This type of policy covers unforeseen medical expenses during the trip, delays that lead to missed connections, and refunds the trip costs in the event of an illness that prevents you from taking the trip. For the broadest coverage, the policy must be purchased within 21 days of making the initial deposit, and the policy is more expensive the closer you are to the trip.

These policies are broad and forgiving, but can also be very expensive. At Chartwell, a division of EPIC, we encourage self-insuring through large deductibles across all of our products – this keeps your policies from being affected by claim surcharges, avoids “claim clutter” (which is unappealing to underwriters), and keeps premiums lower. This mentality can be applied to travel insurance as well: per-trip travel insurance is often 10% of the trip cost. If you buy travel insurance for every trip, you’ll soon approach the cost of the trip in insurance. Since the pandemic, cancellation for any reason is not always offered, and may only refund 50-75% of the trip cost. Because of these reasons, we advise that policies like this should only be purchased for very special trips with large expenses.

Annual Travel Insurance

For regular travel, we recommend placing one or both of the below low-cost annual programs which provide medical and evacuation coverage. The first of these programs is Chubb Travel 365. For an annual premium, the program includes coverage on three separate tiers:

While these coverages are not as high as a traditional per-trip travel insurance policy, there is plenty of support for regular travel mishaps, and higher limits for true emergencies like medical expenses, death, and evacuations. More information is available here, and coverage is available for residents of all states except Connecticut, Kansas, New York, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.  Pricing information is available here.

Another annual program which broadens the evacuation coverage in the Chubb Travel 365 program is MedJet. This program is $295 annually for an individual, and $395 for a family. The criteria for transportation with MedJet does not require illness/injury to be life-threatening or medically necessary, and the transportation coordinated is based on member preference. This gives members who are in stable condition coverage to be transported to a medical facility of their choice, regardless of whether they have access to appropriate or adequate care. For more detail, and to purchase this coverage, please see the link here.

Annual travel programs are a good alternative to single trip travel insurance for the trips you take with some frequency.  Even though you may forfeit some non-refundable hotels and reservations once in a while you’ll come out ahead by saving the per trip cost of travel insurance and have the assurance that if there is a medical emergency, or your rental car is damaged, you’ll have coverage under the Chubb Travel 365 and MedJet.

We are pleased to discuss all aspects of travel insurance with you; please contact your Chartwellian, or email Rebecca at rwoan@chartwellins.com.